THN Archive: Best In Show

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Best In Show – Aug 15, 2022 - Vol 76, Issue 02 - Ken Campbell

IF YOU WERE inclined to drop 20 bucks on a membership to the Preds Pet Club last season, you would have received, among other things, an autographed 5-by-7 photo of Juuse Saros and his Siberian Husky, Kesa. It probably goes without saying that the photo was signed by Saros, not Kesa. But where they actually had us was at the Preds Light Up Poop Bag Holder. Where do we sign up for that?

It turns out that aside from being one of the NHL’s best goalies, Saros is also an animal lover. So much so that he actually has a tattoo of Kesa on his right forearm. The money raised by the Preds Pet Club goes to help local animal shelters and foster organizations, something that is near and dear to Saros’ heart and the main reason why he was so keen to participate in it. In fact, last season, he and his fiancee, Minna Varis, decided to foster a three-month-old rescue dog that was found wandering around a trailer park near Nashville with her sister.

The plan was just to keep her temporarily while a forever home was found, but they failed miserably. They named her Nala and adopted her, and now Saros has to go out and get another tattoo. Saros doesn’t even know what breed Nala is – he reckons she’s a mix of a Golden and Labrador Retriever – but he knows she’s adorable. “We fostered her for a couple of weeks, but our dog loved having her around, and we loved her, too,” Saros said. “It was just a good mix, so we ended up keeping her. We always wanted another one, so we kind of had it in mind that she might stay with us.”

Saros and Varis plan to marry next summer and just bought a bigger house in Nashville to accommodate the two dogs and what they hope will be a young family. Ask any NHL player who has ever been traded and he’ll tell you that kind of planning is often a recipe for being shipped out and having to re-establish yourself with a new team in a new city, especially when you don’t have a no-move clause. But that’s not a concern for Saros, who is under contract to the Predators for three more seasons at what is turning out to be an extremely team-friendly $5-million annual cap hit. That $5-million figure ties him with six of his contemporaries for 14th-highest among NHL stoppers. So GM David Poile and coach John Hynes can hit the rack every night knowing they won’t awake in a cold sweat because of their goaltending. That’s nothing new in Nashville, where Saros’ predecessor, Pekka Rinne, tended twine for so many years.

But that’s a luxury in the NHL, even in an industry where supply often exceeds demand. The problem is that, in recent years, the supply chain has been more than a little unpredictable, which has left some teams scrambling on an annual basis to find an asset to serve their needs. No such problem for the Predators. The organization thought so highly of Rinne that, in February, they made him the first player in franchise history to have his number retired. During his speech that night, Rinne said, “I have no doubt that (the current Predators) have what it takes to go all the way. And I have no doubt, not since Day 1, that as far as goaltending is concerned, I’ve left the net in the most skilled and capable hands there are.” Later that night, Saros stopped 27 of the 28 shots directed at him by the Dallas Stars, plus four more in the shootout, to give the Predators a 2-1 victory. Even though the transition from Rinne to Saros had been a couple of seasons in the making, that game represented a statement from Saros that Rinne could ride off into the sunset and the Predators’ crease would be just fine without him.

“When you look at his quality of play, his first season without Pekka, it really became his team,” said Hynes of Saros. “He became the guy that guys turned to and looked to. He had more of a voice in the room. I think it was a great season for him, with the Nashville Predators becoming Juuse Saros’ team in the transition from Pekka, and that was a big part of it. He’s really transitioned from that role, behind a guy whose jersey is retired in the arena, to it becoming his team and his organization – his city.”

It was kind of a strange season for the Predators in 2021-22, starting with the fact that nobody really expected them to accomplish much. And when you consider that they squeaked into the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference and were swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champs in seven days, it might be difficult to argue they actually did accomplish much of anything. But aside from Saros finishing third in Vezina Trophy voting, the Predators had more than a few reasons to be encouraged by the strides they made last season.

Captain Roman Josi was all-world, leading defensemen (and all but 10 forwards) in scoring with 96 points, the highest total put up by a defenseman in almost 30 years. Matt Duchene and Filip Forsberg each exploded with 40-goal seasons, and Tanner Jeannot scored and bullied his way into a tremendous rookie year. Things might have been different had Saros not felt a certain pop in his foot late in the season. That pop turned out to be a high-ankle sprain, which derailed his chances of playing in the playoffs.

Things might have been different, but probably not. The Avs were such a juggernaut that, even if they’d been facing Saros, they’d have almost certainly made Nashville a first-round casualty. Instead of “eight wasted days” (in the words of Calgary Flames coach Darryl Sutter), perhaps it would have been 10 or 12.

Hynes described Saros as “the backbone of the Predators” last season, and like any backbone, he had to be strong and durable. No goalie in the NHL played more games or more minutes than Saros did last season, and only Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets faced more shots and made more saves. According to Hynes, Nashville’s team doctors maintain the high-ankle sprain had nothing to do with Saros’ 2021-22 workload, and much of it, in fact, had to do with the long stretches of inactivity brought on by the pandemic and the Olympic break. But, regardless, once the league returns to a normal schedule this season, Preds fans can count on all those numbers to decrease. “When you look at his age and his compete level, he’s a guy who can do it,” Hynes said. “But the games will be cut down, for sure. We’ll try to give him some more opportunities this year where you can lessen his workload a little bit. But that backup goaltender has to come in and get some wins for you. He’s got to get some wins.”

And that was a huge part of the dilemma the Predators faced last season. In a conference and a league where every point matters, the Predators did not have the luxury of playing a backup much of the time. David Rittich did not have a good 2021-22 and started just 12 games.

For his part, Saros doesn’t have an issue with the increased workload, but part of the problem – and this is something he learned from Rinne – is his approach to his craft. Like Rinne, Saros is the kind of goalie who will go out for a morning skate and be diving around his net trying to stop every puck. “We’d have to say, ‘Juice, you can’t play every shot in practice to the end,’” Hynes said. “A rebound, a tip, a second one and he’s diving all over the place. It’s like, ‘It’s a morning skate. Get ready for the game.’”

Unless he’s forced to do so, Saros rarely forgoes optional practices or skates, and his work ethic will not allow him to give anything but total effort. It’s admirable. In fact, it’s the kind of quality NHL teams look for in their players all the time, but it can also take a toll on a body, even in someone as young and strong as Saros.

And at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, Saros isn’t a hulking figure. “I was just really excited about it, and I tried to approach it more like it was kind of what I had been working my whole life for, so I just wanted to enjoy every day and not take it for granted,” said Saros of last season. “That was my mindset going in, just trying to make the most out of it. It felt natural to me because when I played in Finland, I played a lot, and I always enjoyed that. And it’s obviously a different schedule than the Finnish League, but it felt natural to me. I was happy with it, and I didn’t feel tired or anything, especially since pretty much at the end of January, every game mattered so much, so I was just mentally excited, and I didn’t feel tired. It was a little bit different for sure.”

IT WAS A GREAT SEASON FOR HIM, WITH THE PREDATORS BECOMING JUUSE SAROS’ TEAM IN THE TRANSITION FROM PEKKA RINNE– NASHVILLE COACH JOHN HYNES

It was a little bit different, and Saros felt it every time he looked up at the Bridgestone Arena rafters to see Rinne’s No. 35 banner hanging there. The Finnish natives played five seasons together, with the last three serving as a transition period where Saros took on more responsibility, both in the regular season and the playoffs. Saros’ play in 2021-22 proved beyond any doubt he could handle a heavy workload and the pressure that accompanies being a No. 1 goalie in the NHL. In fact, he showed he could thrive in that role. Much of that was learned from his predecessor. Rinne is 12 years Saros’ senior, which meant that Saros, when he got to Nashville, was sharing the crease duties with a player he grew up idolizing. He learned his lessons well – from taking a competitive mindset into practice to how treat rink attendants.

And that’s part of what made the transition between Rinne and Saros so seamless. They had split the games pretty much equally during the regular season in Rinne’s last three years, and they’re so alike on and off the ice that there were no real surprises when it came to Saros. It’s difficult to give a guy Vezina Trophy love when he’s only playing half the games, but when he plays at the level Saros did last season and is occupying the crease as much as Saros was, people take more notice. So it could only be a matter of time before Saros duplicates Rinne’s accomplishments and wins a Vezina of his own.

Aside from the Vezina win in 2017-18, Rinne was a finalist for the award three times, showing the kind of consistency the Predators are confident Saros will bring over the coming seasons. “They’re both low maintenance in that they respect the decisions, they respect coaches and they’re very coachable,” Hynes said. “No excuses. There never was with Pekka. If they play well, it’s a deflection to the team. If they don’t play well or the team loses, it’s what they could have done better. They’re very similar. Understated. Neither one of them was a big vocal guy in the room, but when they did talk, it held a lot of weight.”

In the meantime, Saros will continue to stop pucks and win games for the Predators, and he’ll continue to be an advocate for his four-legged friends. This season, fans who join the Preds Pet Club will get a photo of Saros and both his dogs, along with that awesome Light Up Poop Bag Holder. And who knows, perhaps by that time he’ll have tattoos of his dogs on both of his forearms. Saros figures it’s the least he can do. “I think so,” he said when asked whether he intends to get Nala’s image inked on his body. “I have to be fair to both my dogs.”